The second Abel Prize has been awarded to Michael Francis Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer for "their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics".

The battle between Nokia and Microsoft to dominate the mobile operating system was thrown into sharp relief this week as both upgraded their software platforms. And LG Electronics - currently the dynamic player among the handset top five - licensed both systems.

It was September 2003 when we last saw an Athlon 64 FX break cover. That was the much applauded, if slightly pricey 2.2GHz FX-51. The latest FX CPU from AMD is the FX-53, featuring an architecturally identical core to the FX-51 but running instead at a slightly faster core speed of 2.4GHz, writes Wayne Brooker.

The future of the integration market remains an uncertain one, writes Bloor Research analyst Peter Abrahams. Using a fairly general definition of the beast to include messaging, adapters, BPM (business process management), BAM (business activity monitoring), and so forth, the concern is that there appear to be a very large number of companies - around 100 - all fighting for a slice of the same pie. Clearly, it is not possible for them all to survive.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently claimed that new research proves that illegal file-sharing is hitting labels' wallets hard.

A crazed 14-year-old girl from Hong Kong had to be subdued by police with pepper spray, after she attacked her dear old ma with a knife and wooden pole and chased her around their flat. This must rate as the Godzilla of all teen strops.

European mobile phone operators Orange, Telecom Italia Mobile, T-Mobile and Telefónica Móviles today pledged to co-operate and make roaming much easier for their 230 million customers worldwide - particularly as the industry starts to roll out commercial 3G services.

National security emerged as the sole political trophy of this year's presidential campaign, after a brutal week of Washington infighting over a controversial book by former security czar Richard Clarke.

Civil liberties and privacy groups have launched a campaign against airline industry plans to create a massive international database of passport holders tied together with "flawed" biometric technology.

Scientists today announced research suggesting buckyball molecules can trigger organ damage in fish, raising fears over the safety of the technology. When added to aquarium water, the particles also devastated the population of Daphnia, the tiny water-fleas near the bottom of the food chain.